Our Values

OpenOakland was formed by people with a desire to build a community that can leverage modern tools and technology to transform our city. Part of the reason we created OpenOakland, initially as a Code for America Brigade, was to connect local hackers with civic issues and city staff to work together to build tools and services that lower barriers for all to improve Oakland. We’ve grown as an organization into a civic innovation nonprofit and we recently laid down our organizational values.

Our Organizational Values

We believe all Oaklanders’ ideas, skills and experiences can benefit our city when applied to civic challenges.

We believe technology is an enabler and is far less important than the change it can support when used effectively.

We are nonpartisan and do not endorse candidates for elected office.

We provide a bridge between government and communities and work to make government more accessible to all.

We are hackers for good – we experiment, we build, we push boundaries to discover better ways to do things.

We work in the open, producing open source technology that others can use freely to improve their community also.